Eng: 'Lesson One for Damian Hinds: Bring back textbooks' By Chris McGovern

News articles, interviews, research, events and lots more - ready for your comments.
Post Reply
User avatar
Debbie_Hepplewhite
Posts: 2498
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

Eng: 'Lesson One for Damian Hinds: Bring back textbooks' By Chris McGovern

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

In The Conservative Woman:
Lesson One for Damian Hinds: Bring back textbooks

By Chris McGovern
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/les ... textbooks/
How long will it take Damian Hinds, the new education secretary, to understand his portfolio and to learn the ropes? A sad truth about education ministers over the past few decades is that they are ‘slower learners’. It was thirty years or more, for example, before the penny finally dropped that phonics are the key to the teaching of reading. It has taken as long to work out that the GCSE exam lacks the academic rigour of O-levels.

Mr Hinds is about to discover his new department’s latest ‘slow learner’s’ breakthrough. It is its recognition that textbooks are important. The schools minister, Nick Gibb, recently told the Policy Exchange think-tank that the ‘long-term movement away from textbooks is something that might be about to go into reverse’. He noted that only 10 per cent of teachers in England use a textbook as a basis for their teaching as opposed to 70 per cent in Singapore. By the age of 15, according to the OECD, Singaporean pupils are three years ahead in terms of attainment.
Post Reply